“Well. to be blunt — it feels like the world is ending & it’s making me want to fuck.” A risky text, to say the least. “Orgy?” An even riskier text.
On the evening of March 10, Cornell students received the news that our semester would be cut short, with online classes replacing in-person learning. We wouldn’t see each other until August.
I first received the information in a dining hall, and I was dumbfounded, in denial — it wouldn’t hit me. I thought it was a hoax, some bitter computer science major’s sick hack. For an hour, I was numb. Yet, as I processed the coronavirus confusion on the phone with my parents, something was calling to me from the back of my mind. I felt a buzzing — a quiet panic in my gut.
I wanted to do something crazy.
As the siren songs of howling, drunk Collegetown kids permeated through my window, I thought through my many saved ideas for college shenanigans. A bar would be too crowded, a jaunt at the gorge at night would disrespect its victims, hard drugs are not for me — and then I had it. A threesome.
I immediately sent the aforementioned texts to Anna*, a past hookup from whom I had been taking a break, hoping to transition from intense sex to platonic comfort as friends. I was feeling good about not having sex with her, being less controlled by thoughts of planning my next booty call. I didn’t want to put sex first anymore. I’d even stopped myself from dancing with her at an incredibly sexually charged queer party.
But all that changed with the coronavirus. My hunger to push the boundaries of my comfort zone was strong — banishment to my distant suburbia would be like death, I thought. If I wanted to die in peace, I had to have a threesome. Restraint and reason flew off the table.
I felt free as soon as I sent that text. I felt even freer when I got to Anna’s apartment, amazed at myself for getting there. I was calm. I wasn’t sweaty, my heart didn’t pound. I was just beaming. I met Julia — who had been hooking up with Anna in my stead — as I walked in, asking her “so, Julia, who the hell are you?” The fear of the impending apocalypse seemed to make me confident, smooth and maybe even a little cooler than I was before.
We talked lengthily about our backgrounds, our interests, getting to know each other before we became intimate. Anna listened to Julia and me converse, piping in every now and then. We enjoyed a bottle of wine, and I felt classy. I knew Anna and Julia liked each other more than Anna and I liked each other, and I was okay with it. I told them I was okay with it. We were honest with each other because it felt like the end of the world.
Some weed, a few glasses of wine, a random meditation and an hour of laughter later, we realized it was time.
“So, who kissed who first?,” one of my friends asked the next day, eyes wide. “How did it work with three girls?!?” I don’t remember who kissed who first — it didn’t matter. We were all equally interested in each other. Though we had different relationships with each other, no one had more power than the other. So how did it work?
It worked with patience. With lightheartedness, affection and understanding. We fingered and went down on each other; two focused on one person, one person focused on two. There was always one hand on one thigh and another hand on a back, in someone’s hair, an ass, caressing, smacking, groping, tracing. We worked slowly and rhythmically, and we rested. It felt natural. I had recommended earlier that we hold no expectations for each other; establishing the bed as a safe place for exploration made the night magical.
When we had all finished at least once or twice, we decided to go to sleep. I was hot, a little uncomfortable pushed against the wall. I listened to Julia and Anna sleep, snoring slightly, someone grinding her teeth. The wine in my body kept me awake, and the satisfaction from the night somehow kept me profoundly content in my contortion against the wall.
Three hours later, my movements must’ve woken up Anna and Julia. We were all up at 5 a.m., in a drowsy, loving fugue. We talked about going on an adventure the next day, hanging out as a thrupple and what it would be like when we saw each other on campus later. We talked about our, then presumed, two weeks left as we held each other (how cute of us), how we should definitely do this again, how much we couldn’t believe we’d had the threesome and how Julia and I had only just met. But we got restless.
We ended up watching the pink sky turn grey at sunrise, facing west in the bleachers at Schoellkopf field. Buried under two sweatshirts, I was cold, relaxed and happy. I didn’t think about how the world was changing, how I wouldn’t see the seniors ever again or about how everything I took the time to build over the past semester would be wiped clean by the five months we would have away from Ithaca. We took a few selfies and got breakfast, and I saw Julia for lunch later that day. We were both glowing, even with no sleep. Campus was quiet.
Since then, the devastation of the coronavirus on society and my everyday life has been setting in. I’ve been depressed, excited, then depressed again. I’ve been texting Anna and Julia a little, talking to them around campus with big smiles. We don’t know what’s happening with our springs and summers, where we will go or who we will see, but we can hold onto that night with affection and amazement.
The threesome, though an exercise of compulsory hedonism born from a perhaps unhealthy impulse, made me appreciate life. How astounding it is to please women, to connect the way we did, to be real and intimate. Yes, that night was a bit of a coping mechanism, but it was a goddamn great one.
*Names are changed for their privacy.
Thirsty Third is a student at Cornell University. Comments can be sent to [email protected]. Sex on Thursday appears every other Thursday.